Idaho Steelheads dominate Colorado Eagles to finish sweep

Colorado heads on the road at 1-3-0-1

So far on the 2012-13 season for the Colorado Eagles, any one or all three of those adjectives could describe the team's play.

Whereas the first four games of the year had seen Colorado fail to finish, on Saturday at the Budweiser Events Center the home team could not have had a worse start, and by the time they got going the Idaho Steelheads were on their way to a series sweep, this time claiming a 6-1 victory in front of another packed arena.

The Steelheads scored a pair of shorthanded goals, one coming in the first as part of a three-goal frame to get things going and another in the third to erase any ideas of a rally.

As little as the Eagles were connecting on passes most of the night, however, it seemed a comeback was not in the stars.

Jack Combs, who along with Michael Forney and Chad Costello have provided essentially all of Colorado's offense thus far, scored the only goal of the game for Colorado, and with relatively little interruption in front of the net, Steelheads goalie Josh Robinson was successful in earning his second win of the year, stopping 34 shots.

The Eagles dropped to 1-3-0-1 as they head out on the road for the first time this season. "We didn't play well in any of the zones. I thought we played weak in all three zones," said Colorado coach Chris Stewart, whose team will not play again until Friday at Utah. "We were on the outside of the rink the majority of the night whether it was on our end or their end. We weren't willing to pay the price."

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"All three zones, we want to be good and have good speed, but that's just one of those things where we have to come up as a group of five, come up together and work it out," defenseman Jake Marto said. "We've got to play better hockey, better defensively. Better D-zone will make it a lot easier to play in their zone."

Idaho, a team that finished last in the Mountain Division a year ago and beat Colorado just twice in eight games, proved to be a strong possession team the entire series, and the Steelheads on Saturday stormed their way to four straight goals to open up the set finale, with a shorthanded goal early in the first a sign of things to come.

After Sam Carrick had scored his first pro goal on a 2-on-1 chance at 2:40 of the first, Idaho struck again two minutes later as one of their own was sitting in the box. Hubert Labrie won a puck in the neutral zone and found Ron Meyers streaking 1-on-1 with Aaron Schneekloth, and the second-year player was able to get a shot off against the veteran defender that beat Kyle Jones.

Idaho added two more scores, with Tristan King's wrister at 5:32 of the second frame chasing Jones.

For a time, replacement Adam Brown managed to subdue the Steelheads scoreboard show, all the while with the Eagles showing some life at the end of the first period and carrying a 14-9 advantage in shots in the second.

Their best chance to get back in the game came later in the middle stanza, as Idaho players were nabbed for back-to-back tripping calls to force a 5-on-3 situation for 1:35. At 14:14 of the period, Chad Costello rang the post on a shot, but it bounced right to Combs for a putback on the opposite side of the net.

They couldn't find a second score the rest of the night, and at 3:08 of the third, the Eagles allowed another shorthanded goal as Andrew Carroll collected a puck in the neutral zone, took Schneekloth 1-on-1 and swept across the slot for a lift past Brown.

The Eagles outshot the Steelheads 36-28 for the game, yet the perimeter play allowed for Robinson to see the puck pretty clear.

"That's certainly not a (type of) team that generally I've coached, and that's not the team that we're going to finish with, that's for sure," Stewart said.

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